Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  “Then it’s settled. We’ll toss her back in the water and get her on her way. If she attacks us, at least we’ll know, but the last one was easy to kill once we stopped focusing on the wrong person.”

  “I don’t want to die,” the woman cried out in a weak voice.

  I trotted back over to her and swooshed Banger off her back. “I got this, now, kitty.”

  I gently put my hands under her body to lift her up. I was careful not to touch her in any inappropriate places while she was incapacitated, but she curled against my body once she was off the ground, and I couldn’t help but place my hand under one of her ass cheeks.

  “Thank you, Sir Matt,” she cooed.

  “It’s, uh, only Matt,” I replied softly.

  As I carefully walked her down the bank and back to the water’s edge, I couldn’t do anything but look into her watery blue eyes.

  They were to die for.

  RED RIVER

  “I know they called you Helpless,” I said at the shoreline, “but I don’t think that fits. You were super brave to warn me.”

  She reached her arms around my neck to get a better look at my face. I also noticed the cute little stripes on the sides of her cheeks.

  “It’s hard to fit in when you are born to kill every stranger you meet, Sir Matt.”

  “I’m not a sir,” I repeated from moments before. “It’s just Matt.”

  You have weapons like the knights of the Dragon Royale. You have two squires. Are you not a knight?”

  “Well,” I said as I tried to think why she was wrong. Part of me really wanted to be called Sir Matt or Sir anything. But I was barely a knight and certainly not regal enough to fit the bill of a Sir. Rather than deny her outright, I left it open to interpretation. “That’s sort of true, I guess.”

  “Then you are Sir Matt,” she said as a definitive statement. “My rescuer.”

  I needed to change the subject. “Can I call you Echo? It’s a beautiful name.”

  “Where I come from, it means one who cannot create song. One who cannot use music to trap those who would stumble near our water demesne. I only mimic the song of others, which does nothing to snare victims.”

  “You have to create songs to be a siren?” I asked.

  “Indeed. If we repeated a song, someone on the outside might recognize it and be warned. At least, that is what I’ve been told. As I said, I never used song to capture a mate.”

  “Then I think Echo is perfect,” I said. “Take what they said about you and twist it around. Be proud of not being a siren.”

  I looked at how her arm smashed her breast a bit so it squeezed against my forearm. The magic crackled inside the lowest part of my abdomen as if it really wanted to link up with this sexy water creature. Her body was wet, but warm in my arms.

  Somewhere on my phone there was still a message awaiting me to choose yes or no for Echo.

  And why wouldn’t it? She was totally nude and doused with water from being in the puddle. Besides the unnaturally colorful hair and living underwater, she seemed pretty human.

  “I’m going to set you in the stream again. You are welcome to swim away or stay near us on the shore.” I winked at her. “My friends are worried you are going to hurt me, but I don’t get that feeling at all. You’re not going to make a fool of me, are you?”

  She smiled weakly. “You can tell I have not killed a man, because my hair retains streaks of white. Once you let me go, you have my word I will not turn on you, and my hair shall not turn red, like the others. I do not favor the dog man, but I like that you travel with a witch.”

  “So, may I call you Echo?” I asked as I set her down.

  “I shall wear it as a badge of honor.”

  There was no question she’d gotten weaker in the time I’d held her, so I gently put her in the shallow water. She immediately shifted, so her feet got submerged, then she pushed off like she had a thousand pounds on her back.

  For a minute, she appeared to float like a dead fish, but then she became animated and swam with powerful strokes in the clear, red water. Tex and Jo stepped up to the edge a bit downstream to watch.

  “Her name is Echo,” I said to my friends. “Because the other bitches in her clan seem to think that’s a bad word.”

  “We heard you guys talking,” Jo said. “They must be terrible to live with.”

  “Yeah, especially if you’re the kind of girl that hates to kill for fun.” I glanced over and smiled at the two women. They wouldn’t kill for sport, either.

  Echo came out of the water with excitement and knelt in front of me. “Thank you, Sir Matt. You killed my superior, so I don’t have to worry about anyone who will pin me to the shoal this night.” I nodded but was totally smitten by the smoothness of the skin just above her underwater womanhood. Then, it struck me she was speaking of violence to that beautiful body.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? They really did that to you?” I couldn’t believe such a place could exist.

  Anton stepped close to the water. The nude woman took a step back, but the old man was no threat, as best I could tell. “The sirens are like any other race, these days. Kill or be killed. If we were the kind of traveler that would revel in murder, Echo’s kind warning might have opened the door to her kingdom for us to pillage.”

  “But she lives in a stream in the middle of nowhere,” Jo replied. “What would we take?”

  “You catch my meaning, witch,” the general replied with a bit of snark. “She probably collects seashells, or something. Everyone has their own treasure and there is always someone who wants it. She should be more careful.”

  I shook my head in despair because we were way off track.

  “While you are recovering,” I conveyed to Echo, “we are going to cross here, then we’ll try to follow the river as far as we can.”

  “No! You mustn’t cross here. One touch of the water and you will die. My superior is dead, yes, but there are others. And worse creatures. If you disturb the water, they will swarm this place like razor fish to the chum bucket.”

  “Yikes. We don’t want that. Maybe we’ll walk up this side of the stream.” I pointed upriver on our side. I noticed more of the trees, vines, and brush took on the same red hue as the river.

  “If you will travel near the water’s edge, I shall accompany you as far as I’m able.”

  “Can you take us all the way?”

  “All the way?” she mused. “Well, you said you wanted to cross the river. Once you do that, won’t you leave me behind?”

  I had some thoughts about it, but I wanted to put some distance under our feet before I made any decisions. I’d cranked out a lot of rounds in the brief fight, so it seemed like the place should have been crawling with witches already.

  “Tex, were you squelching the sounds from our fight just now?”

  “Aye. I mean, yes.” She laughed. “I’m getting used to magic, but it is still a challenge to run around, fight, and use magic at the same time. I assumed you wanted me to hone my blending silence skills, rather than add to the noise.”

  I wish I’d thought of that in the moment, but I was pleased Tex didn’t need me to direct her every move.

  ***

  “We have a slight problem.” Jo dropped Banger and stood next to me. “The witches are moving down the creek.” She pointed in the direction we’d come from. “And finding all the bodies.”

  “Are they flying?” I wondered aloud.

  “No, they are searching for evidence on foot right now, but they could fly if they so desired.”

  “Fuck. We need to get out of here, but …” I’d played enough tabletop games in my life to know every outing into the magical world came with a body count. The digital Dragon Royale game was no different. At the very least, we had to kill dozens of other knights and squires, to say nothing of the magical creatures who seemed to enjoy being bigtime assholes.

  “We’ll never outrun the crime scenes,” Jo said to finish my thought.

  Tex
leaned against Bart’s staff. “We either fight them all, run like hell, or convince them we’re dead. That is the ultimate Blend.” She giggled a bit.

  “I can help,” Echo said from very close by. She’d beached herself right onto shore, but kept her bare feet in the water.

  That begged the question. “How much of you can stay out of water?”

  “As long as I’m touching the magic stream, I can keep part of my body above the waves for as long as I want. I can get along fine with smaller pools that don’t touch the main course, like you saw, but the magic isn’t as strong.”

  “So, you could sit there on the bank and talk to us all day long and be fine?” I asked.

  “Yes, I can also fight these witches, if you’d like.”

  Echo would fit well into my digital porn collection, if I still had it. Her curvy hips, unnaturally large breasts, and smooth, wet skin would earn her a place in the swimsuit model folder. The angular ears and unique hair would earn her a special place at the top. That said, she did not look like a natural-born fighter.

  “No, we need you to keep watch in the water. Do you know how we can all get across this river and get out of this place without killing any other monsters?” After I said it, I realized I’d called her and her kind monsters, but she didn’t seem to take offense.

  “You will want to avoid these gravel bars, but if we go upstream far enough, I’m sure there is somewhere we can get you across.”

  “But you don’t know where we can safely pass?” I figured every stream had its low point. She would have to know about it. “Are there any bridges?”

  “My range isn’t so great. The sirens were not fond of me exploring, but I did go at least a crown mile in that direction, and two downstream. I never saw a bridge, nor did anyone ever cross. Successfully.” Echo seemed embarrassed what her kind had done.

  “Thank you, Echo.” I turned back to my landed friends. “I’m open to suggestions. I know my app says I can summon a dinghy.”

  Anton snickered. “A tiny bone bag?”

  “Not in this case,” I said with a chuckle. It was damned convenient the magical creatures seemed to know English almost as well as me. I would have to ask Conflict how she managed that, the second before I cut off her head.

  “It’s a boat,” Tex added.

  “Aye, a boat would almost be overkill for this small stream. It can’t be farther than fifty feet. Raven could have jumped the full distance in his youth.”

  “Excuse me again,” Echo volunteered. “Is the boat stout?”

  “I haven’t seen it, but my magic tends toward things I see in my head. In this case, I see it as a yellow rubber raft that seats about six. Two paddles. Maybe a rope tied to the front.”

  “Then it will not survive the crossing,” she said without a trace of sarcasm.

  I chuckled. “We’ll only need to paddle about four times to make it across.”

  “Your dinghy will touch the water and summon creatures more vile than sirens,” she explained. “It will be tipped over and you will be eaten by things you cannot imagine from up here above the surface.”

  “But the stream doesn’t look that deep,” I remarked.

  “I assure you, it is far deeper than it looks. That is part of its deception. Touch the water and you will find yourself in a tight spot.”

  Anton elbowed me and laughed. “Tight spot. I’ll bet.”

  I ignored him as best I could. “Can we use the boat somewhere upstream when we find somewhere safer?”

  “Not in the waters I have traveled. Perhaps beyond.” She shrugged and made her breasts rise and fall in a most pleasing way.

  Anton spoke with great interest. “You must be a powerful magician, young friend, to be able to summon the exact thing you need to cross. What else can you summon? A meal, perhaps?” He tapped the fingertips of one hand against the companions on the other, as if dinner was about to be served.

  “Yeah, it is odd,” Jo suggested. “What was the other thing the game offered for you to purchase?”

  I looked around to Anton and Echo, wondering if I should divulge all my secrets, but it wasn’t much of one.

  “There were a few things of no matter, but besides the boat there was an offer for a dog biscuit.”

  “I won’t complain!” Anton burst out. “Raven needs a meal, too.”

  My eyes rolled in my head. “Conflict knew we’d have to cross this river to reach our mission, so that wasn’t too hard to anticipate, but I’m still trying to figure out why we’d need a dog biscuit.”

  Anton pointed to Raven. The wolf seemed to drool, as if it knew what a dog biscuit was for.

  “It costs Dragon Bux to summon. At this point, I don’t want to use my money, but if there is no place to ever use the boat on this river, perhaps we can make it work for us anyway.”

  I explained my plan and waited for the inevitable complaints, but they never came. Besides multiple requests for a hot meal or a dog bone, even Anton thought my plan had at least even odds of working.

  “Will the witches notice when a Pegasus flies by with a giant rubber raft?” I asked Jo.

  “Their radio chatter has been greatly reduced today, but I have not heard any mention of that. Perhaps because the horse is magic …” Her voice trailed off as if unsure if she wanted to commit to such speculation.

  I stood there steeped in thought for a full minute before making my decision. This game was all about chances.

  “One dinghy, please.”

  ***

  We all watched the leaves up in the canopy, so I almost missed the boat shoot out of the river and land up on the shore near Echo.

  She looked as surprised as the rest of us.

  “How did you do that?” the nude woman burst out.

  “I don’t know, honestly. It’s magic water, I guess. Last time, a flying horse dropped out of the sky with the delivery.”

  “Fine work, young knight,” Anton said in a tone that made me immediately proud.

  The dinghy was the same yellow rubber rowboat I predicted. The next time something like this happened, I was going to visualize a battleship and see if it flopped up on the bank.

  “Do we still have time?” I asked Jo.

  “I think so. They are in the valley, but wary of whatever chopped off those heads.”

  “OK, we’ll toss this in the water and then run upstream. I hope this works, because this brand-new boat is about to be destroyed for 300 Dragon Bux.” I laughed to take the edge off.

  “Any good deception needs one detail that will sell it to any investigator,” Anton began. “During the first campaign of conquest against the Grognard Empire, we constructed hundreds of fake trebuchets to trick the defenders of an important citadel into surrender.”

  “We don’t exactly have—“ Tex started to say.

  “We can’t send an empty boat,” I interrupted. “That’s what you mean, right?”

  “Aye, he gets it.”

  “Well, we aren’t exactly heavy with gear,” I said as Jo strode over and crouched by her pack. Her drab backpack was our only source of food and water, and we didn’t have enough to spare that we could toss some into an empty boat.

  Tex motioned for us to move to the boat. “OK, I don’t know why Blend is my ability, but I’ve seen a few detective movies, so I have some ideas on how we can make this boat disaster look authentic.”

  “Everyone in,” she said. “Muddier feet, the better.”

  We all hopped in and walked around the boat to muddy it up. Anton had to help Raven over the edge, so he wouldn’t mash his front paw, but once he was inside, he seemed to revel in the dirt.

  Banger hopped up and walked on the boat’s rubber floats, but wouldn’t get inside. I figured it was probably a true representation of how it would have gone if we’d done the crossing for real.

  “I have a few empty water bottles,” Jo said as she tossed one in. She also tossed in something small that looked like a lipstick case and a small comb. When she noticed me eying the
m, she added, “Witches don’t need makeup.”

  Anton ripped off a piece of his already-torn pants and threw it to the floor.

  “That should do it,” I said. We all hopped out of the boat like it was an evacuation drill.

  “One more thing,” Tex added. “Jo, hop in and fire your shotgun right at the edge of the inflated part. Fire down into the mud, as if you were shooting at something in the water. I’ll cover your sound.”

  “I hate that loud noise,” Echo relayed from close by.

  Before I could say anything, Jo fired her weapon. I was ten feet away and I barely heard it.

  “Oh, that wasn’t bad,” Echo added.

  Tex’s Blend was improving, but I reminded myself to check her new abilities as soon as I had a free moment. I was dying to see what her level 1 upgrade option was going to be. Jo as well.

  The look was complete. To anyone who found the boat, it would appear as if the occupants had been snatched after a brief fight. The yellow boat was muddy with tufts of grass plastered all over the bottom. A huge black smudge blotted the front of the boat from Jo’s shotgun blast. It appeared as if she’d fired into the water.

  We pushed the surprisingly heavy raft into the water and then Echo helped get it into the middle of the stream. The closer it got to the center, the more agitated the water became below it.

  “I have to let it go at the half,” Echo yelled.

  The boat spun in circles as it floated freely in the middle. It felt silly to watch the boat on a stream that was barely forty feet across at its widest, but moments later the boat began to bounce from being struck from the underside.

  Echo waded through the waist-deep water like it was air. She came over and stood as close to us as she could. We all watched the boat bounce and be driven from side to side by something we could not see below it.

  “You should hide,” Echo suggested. “If my kind returns, they will smell the violence. My superior has floated downstream, but the knight remains where he fell. That will be of interest to them.”

  I pointed to Jo’s bag. “Grab it and let’s go.”

  Tex snatched the backpack and slung it over her shoulders.